Did you miss the news this early morning? We’ve put together a recap to help you see things more clearly.
Mohamed Bazoum, the elected president of Niger, spoke on Thursday evening in a column published by the American daily washington post. He warned of the “devastating” consequences of the coup for the world and the Sahel, which he said could come under the “influence” of Russia through the paramilitary group Wagner. “I call on the US government and the entire international community to help restore constitutional order,” he wrote, “as a hostage,” in his first public statement since his overthrow. ECOWAS, which imposed heavy sanctions on Niamey, gave the putschists until Sunday to restore Mohamed Bazoum, under penalty of potentially using “force”.
For the third time in four months, Donald Trump has pleaded “not guilty” in US criminal justice. Charged with “conspiracy to commit fraud against the United States” aimed at “overthrowing the legitimate results” of the 2020 presidential election, in particular, the former president appeared in federal court in Washington on Thursday. The judge set the date for the next hearing, which Donald Trump will not be forced to attend, on August 28. Prosecutors will, within seven days, propose a trial date, and Donald Trump’s lawyers will then have a week to justify their counter-proposal.
Already imprisoned for nine years in deleterious conditions, the main opponent of the Kremlin, Alexeï Navalny, awaits his new conviction this Friday, this time for “extremism”, a crime for which the prosecution has required twenty years. A longtime opponent of the Russian president, Alexei Navalny saw justice hounded against him before the conflict in Ukraine, but his fate has worsened since. He was imprisoned on his return to Russia, at the beginning of 2021, after surviving in extremis a poisoning which he attributes to the Russian security services acting on the orders of the master of the Kremlin, then he was sentenced twice. His latest trial for “extremism” is taking place behind closed doors in the IK-6 penal colony in Melekhovo, 250 kilometers east of Moscow. Sentenced in June 2022 in a case of fraud which he describes as political revenge, the 47-year-old activist is already serving a nine-year prison sentence there.